Well, that was quite a weekend. We played 4 shows in 2 countries to roughly 100,000 people, spent about 60 hours in the tour bus, took 4 ferries, and drank more Jagermeister than I care to think about. The shows were ace – Green Day, their crew and their fans were all lovely, and it was great to get back to Germany again. Hello to new friends.

To business. I’m pleased to say I have some winners for the Try This At Home competition. I listened to every song submitted, which took a fair while, and I’ve actually had a really hard time picking just two songs (one UK, one ex-UK) for the single. There were a lot of awesome songs submitted, and I want to say thanks to everyone who took the time to upload their tunes. In the end I decided to mention some runners-up as well as the winners, the tunes were so great. So here we are.

UK Winner: The Retrospective Soundtrack Players – Real Cool Hand

Ex-UK Winner: Isaac Graham – Gold And Steel

Runners up:

• Mark McCabe – I Used To Be Eloquent
• Adelaide’s Cape – This Fiction
• Adam Barnes – Come Undone
• Kate McGill – Melancholy Melody
• Taylor Allen – Drinks
• Joey Briggs – Suburban Kid
• Liz Wreck – Part II
• John Moreland – The Future Unfolds

So, congratulations to TRSP and Isaac, two genuinely amazing songs (in my opinion) that I’m very pleased to have on some vinyl with me. And I sincerely encourage everyone to check out the links to all the others as well.

Finally, just a quick reminder about the artwork competition – submissions can be sent in until the end of Thursday, and details about what you need to do can be found in this blog post. Happy, uh, artworking? I’m off to see The Hold Steady, hell yes!